North Attleboro High School Alumni Association

Dr. Erica MacDonald LaPlante
Young Alumni Award
2025

Dr. Erica MacDonald LaPlante ('05) fondly recalls her fourth-grade year at Falls Elementary School, where the influence of teacher Lois Grimaldi left a lasting mark on her. In a classroom full of warmth, compassion, and courage, Mrs. Grimaldi's approach to addressing challenging and sensitive topics sparked Erica's deep curiosity about world events and human rights—an interest that would shape her future path as an educator, researcher, and advocate for social justice.

Erica excelled both academically and athletically at NAHS. She was an honor roll student, a Student Council member, and a four-year varsity swimmer. A freshman on the inaugural NAHS swim team in 2001, over four years, Erica earned six individual league titles, four sectional titles, and one Division 1 state championship, and helped lead the program to back-to-back league championships in just its third and fourth seasons. She graduated as the team's all-time leading scorer and the only female state champion. Erica earned recognition as a four-time Sun Chronicle All-Star and twice as a Boston Globe and Boston Herald All-Scholastic.

After high school, Erica attended Connecticut College, graduating with Honors in 2005 with a degree in international relations. She swam in the NCAA's highly competitive NESCAC Conference for four years, serving as team captain her senior year.

Following graduation, Erica pursued an interest in publishing, securing a "dream job" at Rolling Stone magazine in New York. However, the challenges of corporate publishing, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, led her to seek more fulfilling opportunities.

In the summer of 2010, as part of Bike & Build, an initiative to raise funds and awareness for affordable housing, she embarked on a transformative adventure, biking from Providence, RI, to San Francisco, CA, stopping to work at Habitat for Humanity build sites from coast-to-coast.

Erica's commitment to education and social justice brought her back to New York and academia. She earned an M.A. in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University in 2012 and later taught political science at Central Wyoming College in Jackson Hole, WY.

In 2016, Erica returned to New England as a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut, where she earned her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2022. She is now the Director of the Human Rights Research and DataHub at UConn's Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute.

Erica returned to her hometown in 2024 with her husband, Dr. Justin LaPlante, and their daughter, Louisa Maeve, to raise her family with the same warm, supportive sense of community that North Attleboro provided her.

Driven by a commitment to human rights and social justice, Erica continues to inspire and advocate for meaningful change in the world, much like her fourth-grade teacher, Lois Grimaldi, who first ignited her passion for challenging the status quo and standing up for those whose voices often go unheard.